> If you don't live in Capitol Hill or Pioneer Square (which face
> issues of rapid gentrification and homelessness), the
> local crime stats show that you are vanishingly
> unlikely to be facing even property crime.
Do you really believe this? I live in Ballard, and the rate of property crime has been rapidly rising over the past five years. It's hard to get good statistics because little of it is reported because the police simply don't do anything about it.
In the past five years:
- The strap was cut and a gas can was stolen out of the back of my truck, a week after I got it.
- A chair was stolen from our front porch.
- My wife's car was broken into and her ancient iPod stolen.
- Someone climbed our fence and was wandering around in our backyard before a neighbor scared them off.
We would have certainly had lots of packages stolen too, but we simply don't ship things to our house unless we know we will be home. In addition to those direct crimes against us, we've experienced fun things like:
- Countless RVs illegally parked all around the neighborhood.
- People leaving literal piles of trash behind when they relocate their RV
- People dumping their sewage waste on the road when they relocate their RV.
- RVs catching on fire.
- Someone shitting on the street.
- Another person shitting in our alley.
- A neighbor found a gun in their bushes.
- Needles left on the ground in our yard. (We taught the kids not to touch them.)
- Screaming fights in the middle of the night.
- Homeless people using the port-o-potty painters placed in our front yard. (We put a lock on it after that.)
Seattle has a very serious homeless/drug addict problem and it affects virtually every neighborhood. None of this has anything to do with race, of course, but property crime and the other knock-on effects caused by a large homeless heroin/meth addict population are rampant.
In the past five years:
- The strap was cut and a gas can was stolen out of the back of my truck, a week after I got it.
- A chair was stolen from our front porch.
- My wife's car was broken into and her ancient iPod stolen.
- Someone climbed our fence and was wandering around in our backyard before a neighbor scared them off.
We would have certainly had lots of packages stolen too, but we simply don't ship things to our house unless we know we will be home. In addition to those direct crimes against us, we've experienced fun things like:
- Countless RVs illegally parked all around the neighborhood.
- People leaving literal piles of trash behind when they relocate their RV
- People dumping their sewage waste on the road when they relocate their RV.
- RVs catching on fire.
- Someone shitting on the street.
- Another person shitting in our alley.
- A neighbor found a gun in their bushes.
- Needles left on the ground in our yard. (We taught the kids not to touch them.)
- Screaming fights in the middle of the night.
- Homeless people using the port-o-potty painters placed in our front yard. (We put a lock on it after that.)
Seattle has a very serious homeless/drug addict problem and it affects virtually every neighborhood. None of this has anything to do with race, of course, but property crime and the other knock-on effects caused by a large homeless heroin/meth addict population are rampant.